“This must be Thursday,' said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. 'I never could get the hang of Thursdays.” (Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)

I feel that way about Thursdays. And about most other days of the week as well, if we’re being honest. But when I decided to start publishing a newsletter, and I needed to pick a day of the week to publish it on, Thursday seemed like the best day for it. And, then, in a rather complete failure of imagination, I decided to name it Thursday as well, which is what you’re reading.  

Writing a first letter of a newsletter is awkward. I suppose it’s easier if you’ve got a product you’re marketing — if you’re an author or the like — and so people know who you are and why they’re subscribing. This, on the other hand, will just be me, rambling on once a week about what I’ve been reading, watching, seeing, playing, or otherwise thinking about. The initial subscribers will be people who know me (my wife Grace has said that she will subscribe, and one of my daughters probably will; beyond that, it’s up in the air). The hope (dream? totally unrealistic fantasy?) is that eventually some of those readers might be willing to pay for my writing — only time will tell, I suppose.

And who knows? Maybe someday this will be my author newsletter. If I ever decide it’ll be worth it to file the serial numbers off my fanfics and either try to get them traditionally published or else independently publish them. At this point Grace has said that my fics are sufficiently far into an AU (alternate universe) that my characters are hardly the originals anyway, and she’s largely right, but there are other things in the way that I’m not quite ready to deal with yet. We’ll talk more about that in future issues of this newsletter, I’m sure.

But that’s in the future. For now, let’s start off with this declaration, a promise from me to you: ALL WORDS IN THIS NEWSLETTER WILL BE 100% HUMAN-PRODUCED. I do not use generative AI in any way in my writing, and I cannot imagine a circumstance in which I ever would.

What I’ve been reading

Art in America, Spring 2026: Facing the rising cost of everything, I had made the decision to maintain my subscription to Artforum and let my subscription to Art in America lapse after the Spring 2026 issue. However, after finishing that issue today, I’m second-guessing that decision. The articles “American Art from A to Z” (by 26 different writers), “The MAGA Theory of Art” (by Becca Rothfield), and “Worker with a Brush” (by John P. Murphy) are some of the best art history writing I’ve read in the past year. Which means that now I’ve got to go to a bookstore and grab the summer issue, so I can see if the spring issue was a fluke or if the quality has jumped up recently and I need to find room in the budget for Art in America.

Quote of the day

Yesterday my younger daughter, Lily, asked me who had said “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” I looked it up today and it was British author L. P. Harley (1895-1972). It was, in fact, the opening sentence to his 1953 novel, The Go-Between. Another interesting quote from this novel is:

“I might go for a walk.” Even to me this sounded a pedestrian thing to do.

The fact that I find this inordinately amusing should tell you everything you need to know about my sense of humor.

That’s it for now

I hope you enjoyed this strange and abbreviated issue of Thursday. Feel free to respond with any comments, complaints, suggestions, requests, or anything else.

Jason